1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telecommunications systems and, more particularly, to a system which provides a call center operator with automated activation of and access to an internet web site.
2. Description of the Related Art
A call center is a group of agents or automated voice response units that conduct customer contact functions, such as customer service, order entry, reservations, dispatch, telemarketing and other common applications, over the telephone. The use of call centers today has become commonplace as many organizations now manage their customer contact functions via such call centers.
In addition to call centers, many organizations now maintain web sites on the internet for customers to access. Such web sites have become a common and, in many instances, a necessary marketing tool for businesses and organizations. Many of these web sites provide telephone numbers for the customer to call to get further information on the product or service being marketed. Currently, call centers which handle these calls must either maintain the organizations' data in their own computers, resulting in a duplication of data and increased costs to maintain such data, or manually access the organizations web site after a customer calls, resulting in longer time per call and, correspondingly, decreased productivity and customer satisfaction.
The effectiveness and productivity of call centers is scrutinized by organizations just as closely as other business functions. Call centers, like any other business function, must be cost effective if they are to be useful to an organization. In addition to their cost, call centers are closely scrutinized by organizations because of their inherent function as a customer contact tool. Call centers are often designed to serve as the main source of customer interaction and, consequently, their importance may be vital to the success of an organization. Thus, means to improve call center productivity and customer satisfaction are constantly being sought. These objectives are not mutually exclusive of each other and ultimately come down to shortening the length of the telephone calls. This can be achieved by instantly providing the relevant information, both from a local host computer or from a customer's computer via a web browser, on the call center operator's screen. Such instant access increases customer satisfaction by delivering prompt service and increases the number of calls handled by each operator, thereby enabling the call center to employ less operators or provide additional services with the same number of operators.
The current state of the art is such that the call center operator receives or places a telephone call through the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and inputs and retrieves data relevant to the particular call via a computer workstation. Specifically, in a typical call center, a telephone number is dialed by a customer from a remote location and routed to the call center through the PSTN. The telephone call, and its associated dialed number identification service (DNIS), auto number identification (ANI) and destination directory number (Destination DN) components, is received by the call center switch or Public Branch Exchange (PBX) which, in turn, splits the call into a voice component, which is routed to a telephone at a particular workstation location, and a data component, which is routed to a server which houses computer/telephony integration (CTI) software. The CTI software processes the DNIS, ANI and Destination DN data causing the data relevant to the particular call to "pop" (i.e., be automatically displayed) on the workstation screen. Thus, the call center operator will have the relevant data on his or her computer workstation screen at the start of his or her conversation with the customer. Some data, such as the DNIS, ANI or other call related data, may also be routed to the telephone and visually displayed for the operator.
Although the prior art call centers are useful for their intended purposes, none has proven to be entirely effective. Specifically, in the typical prior art call center environment, the data which pops on the workstation screen resides in a local host computer or server. However, such an arrangement has several deficiencies. First, call centers often provide customer contact functions for several different organizations. Thus, the call centers must load, maintain and service the organizations' data in their local host computer or server. This may require an extensive infrastructure and tremendous resources to maintain, service and update the data. Second, organizations are increasingly marketing their products or services over the internet, in addition to utilizing call centers to handle the direct customer contact. Thus, these organizations must either maintain two sets of data, one on the web host and one on the call center's local host computer or server, or the call center operator must manually access the web host after receiving the telephone call from the customer. Both of these scenarios have their own inherent deficiencies, which decrease productivity and increase costs. For instance, maintaining two sets of data requires both the organization and the call center to maintain computer equipment and the data therein, whereas requiring the call center operator to manually access the remote web host after receiving the telephone call from the customer increases the time required to serve the customer, thereby decreasing the number of calls handled by the operator each day, as well as decreasing customer satisfaction. Although a call center may access an organization's remote data through a private network, the number of private terminal emulation packages that may be displayed on the call center's workstation screens and, consequently, the number of different private network remote applications that may be handled, is limited.
Accordingly, there is still a need in the art for a call center which provides automatic access to and retrieval of data from both a local call center computer or server and a local or remote web host by a call center operator. Any such device should result in the relevant local application or web site automatically "popping" (i.e., automatically being displayed) on the operator's screen upon receipt of the telephone call. The present invention is particularly suited to overcome those problems which remain in the art in a manner not previously known.